This list of eponymous laws provides links to articles on laws, theorems, principles, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a person. In some cases the person named has coined the law – such as Parkinson's law. In others, the work or publications of the individual have led to the law being so named – as is the case with Moore's law. There are also laws ascribed to individuals by others, such as Murphy's law; or given eponymous names despite the absence of the named person.

Archimedes' principle – Indicates that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces. Named for Archimedes.

Atwood's Law - Any software that can be written in JavaScript will eventually be written in JavaScript.

Babinet's principle – In physics, states that the diffraction pattern from an opaque body is identical to that from a hole of the same size and shape except for the overall forward beam intensity. Named for Jacques Babinet.

Barlow's law – was an incorrect physical law proposed by Peter Barlow in 1825 to describe the ability of wires to conduct electricity.

Baumol's cost disease – In inflation, effect of productivity growth in one sector forcing salary increases in all sectors leading to the other more labor-intensive sectors having prices rise faster than the general rate of inflation (e.g. government, music, healthcare, education).

Beckstrom's law – In economics, states that the value of a network equals the net value added to each user’s transactions conducted through that network, summed over all users. Named for Rod Beckstrom.

Boyle's law – In physics, one of the gas laws, states that the volume and pressure of an ideal gas of fixed mass held at a constant temperature are inversely proportional, or, that the product of absolute pressure and volume of a fixed mass is always constant. Discovered by and named after Robert Boyle (1627–1691).

Briffault's Law - "The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place." Named after Robert Briffault.

Campbell's law – "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."[1] Named after Donald T. Campbell (1916–1996)

Cassie's law – Describes the effective contact angle θc for a liquid on a composite surface.

Celine's laws – Celine's laws are a series of three laws regarding government and social interaction attributed to the fictional character Hagbard Celine from Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Charles's law – In physics, one of the gas laws, states that at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of a gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature (in kelvins) increases or decreases. Named after Jacques Charles.

Child's law – States that the space-charge limited current in a plane-parallel diode varies directly as the three-halves power of the anode voltage and inversely as the square of the distance separating the cathode and the anode. Named after Clement D. Child; also known as the Child-Langmuir Law (after Irving Langmuir). See also Mott–Gurney law.

Chladni's law – Relates the frequency of modes of vibration for flat circular surfaces with fixed center as a function of the numbers of diametric (linear) nodes and of radial (circular) nodes. Named after Ernst Chladni.

First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Coase theorem – Economic outcomes will always be Pareto efficient where transaction costs are negligible regardless of the initial distribution of property rights so long as those property rights are clearly defined.

D'Alembert's principle – States that the sum of the differences between the forces acting on a system of mass particles and the time derivatives of the momenta of the system itself along any virtual displacement consistent with the constraints of the system, is zero. Named after Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

Dale's principle – In neuroscience, states that a neuron is capable of producing and secreting only one neurotransmitter from its axon terminals. Named after Henry Hallett Dale but more recent data suggests it to be false. A more common interpretation of the original statement made by Dale is that neurons release the same set of transmitters at all of their synapses.

Dilbert principle – Coined by Scott Adams as a variation of the Peter Principle of employee advancement. Named after Adams' Dilbert comic strip, it proposes that "the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."

Doctorow's law - "Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit."

Dolbear's law – an empirical relationship between temperature and the rate of cricket chirping.

Dollo's law – "An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors." Simply put this law states that evolution is not reversible.

Dunbar's number – A theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150. First proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

Dunning–Kruger effect – Is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Duverger's law – After Maurice Duverger. Winner-take-all (or first-past-the-post) electoral systems tend to create a 2 party system, while proportional representation tends to create a multiple party system.

Emmert's law – In optics, objects that generate retinal images of the same size will look different in physical size (linear size) if they appear to be located at different distances. Named for Emil Emmert.

Fitts' law – A principle of human movement published in 1954 by Paul Fitts which predicts the time required to move from a starting position to a final target area. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, e.g. with a hand or finger, and on a computer, e.g. with a mouse.

Graham's law – In physics, a gas law which states that the average kinetic energy of the molecules of two samples of different gases at the same temperature is identical. It is named for Thomas Graham (1805–1869), who formulated it.

Gresham's law – Typically stated as "Bad money drives good money out of circulation", but more accurately "Bad money drives good money out of circulation if their exchange rate is set by law." Coined in 1858 by British economist Henry Dunning Macleod, and named for Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579). The principle had been stated before Gresham by others, including Nicolaus Copernicus.

Grosch's law – Herb Grosch in 1965 argued that the economic value of computation increases with the square root of the increase in speed—that is, to do a calculation 10 times as cheaply you must do it 100 times as fast.

Hamilton's principle – States that the dynamics of a physical system is determined by a variational problem for a functional based on a single function, the Lagrangian, which contains all physical information concerning the system and the forces acting on it. Named after William Rowan Hamilton.

Hanlon's razor – A corollary of Finagle's law, and a play on Occam's razor, normally taking the form, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." As with Finagle, possibly not strictly eponymous. Alternatively, "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence."

Hauser's law – Empirical observation about U.S. tax receipts as a percentage of GDP, theorized to be a natural equilibrium.

Hawthorne effect – A form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied. Named after Hawthorne Works.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle – States that one cannot measure values (with arbitrary precision) of certain conjugate quantities, which are pairs of observables of a single elementary particle. The most familiar of these pairs is position and momentum.

Hooke's law – The tension on a spring or other elastic object is proportional to the displacement from the equilibrium. Frequently cited in Latin as "Ut tensio sic vis." Named after Robert Hooke (1635–1703).

Hotelling's law in economics – Under some conditions, it is rational for competitors to make their products as nearly identical as possible.

Hubble's law – Galaxies recede from an observer at a rate proportional to their distance to that observer. Formulated by Edwin Hubble in 1929.

Isaac Bonewits's laws of magic – "Laws" synthesized from a multitude of belief systems from around the world, collected in order to explain and categorize magical beliefs within a cohesive framework.

Jevons paradox – The proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.

Korte's law – The greater the length of a path between two successively presented stimuli, the greater the stimulus onset asynchrony must be for an observer to perceive the two stimuli as a single moving object.

Little's law – In queuing theory, "The average number of customers in a stable system (over some time interval) is equal to their average arrival rate, multiplied by their average time in the system." The law was named for John Little from results of experiments in 1961.

Littlewood's law – States that individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month. Coined by Professor J E Littlewood, (1885–1977).

Lotka's law – In infometrics, states that the number of authors publishing a certain number of articles is a fixed ratio to the number of authors publishing a single article. As the number of articles published increases, authors producing that many publications become less frequent. For example, there may be 1/4 as many authors publishing two articles within a specified time period as there are single-publication authors, 1/9 as many publishing three articles, 1/16 as many publishing four articles, etc. Though the law itself covers many disciplines, the actual ratios involved are very discipline-specific.

Marconi's law – An empirical law that relates radio communication distance to antenna tower height

Meadow's law – A precept, now discredited, that since cot deaths are so rare, "One is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder, until proved otherwise." It was named for Sir Roy Meadow, a discredited paediatrician prominent in the United Kingdom in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Mendel's laws – Named for the 19th century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who determined the patterns of inheritance through his plant breeding experiments, working especially with peas. Mendel's first law, or the law of segregation, states that each organism has a pair of genes; that that it inherits one from each parent, and that the organism will pass down only one of these genes to its own offspring. These different copies of the same gene are called alleles. Mendel's second law, the law of independent assortment, states that different traits will be inherited independently by the offspring.

Menzerath's law, or Menzerath–Altmann law (named after Paul Menzerath and Gabriel Altmann), is a linguistic law according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa.

Miller's law – In communication, states: "To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of." Named after George Armitage Miller. In psychology, states that the number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven. Also named after George Miller. In software development, states: "All discussions of incremental updates to Bugzilla will eventually trend towards proposals for large scale redesigns or feature additions or replacements for Bugzilla." Named after Dave Miller.

Miller's Rule – In optics, an empirical rule which gives an estimate of the order of magnitude of the nonlinear coefﬁcient.

Mooers' law – "An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." An empirical observation made by American computer scientistCalvin Mooers in 1959.

Moravec's paradox – "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

Muphry's law – "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." The editorial equivalent of Murphy's law, according to John Bangsund.

Naismith's rule – A rule of thumb that helps in the planning of a walking or hiking expedition by calculating how long it will take to walk the route, including ascents.

Neuhaus's law – Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed. This "law" had been expressed earlier. For example, Charles Porterfield Krauth wrote in his The Conservative Reformation: "Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points."

Newton's law of cooling – The rate of cooling (or heating) of a body due to convection is proportional to the difference between the body temperature and the ambient temperature.

First law: "A body remains at rest, or keeps moving in a straight line (at a constant velocity), unless acted upon by a net outside force."

Second law: "The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the net force acting upon it."

Third law: "Whenever one body exerts a force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body."

Niven's laws – "If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe."

Nyquist rate – Twice the highest frequency contained within a signal; the minimum sampling rate required to avoid aliasing is strictly greater than this. Named after Harry Nyquist.

Occam's razor – States that explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. ("Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.") When two or more explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Named after William of Ockham (ca.1285–1349).

Papert's principle – "Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows."

Pareto optimality – Given an initial allocation of goods among a set of individuals, a change to a different allocation that makes at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off is called a Pareto improvement. An allocation is defined as "Pareto efficient" or "Pareto optimal" when no further Pareto improvements can be made.

Peter principle – "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) in his book The Peter Principle. In his follow-up book, The Peter Prescription, he offered possible solutions to the problems his principle could cause.

Poe's law (poetry) – There is a maximum desirable length for poems: "The unit of poetry must be fixed by the reader's capacity of attention, and ... the limits of a poem must accord with the limits of a single movement of intellectual apprehension and emotional exaltation," named for Edgar Allan Poe.[2][3] See "The Philosophy of Composition".

Poe's law (religious fundamentalism) – "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."[4] named after Nathan Poe who formulated it on the Web site Christian Forums in 2005.[5] Although it originally referred to creationism, the scope later widened to religious fundamentalism.[6]

Poisson's law of large numbers – For independent random variables with a common distribution, the average value for a sample tends to the mean as sample size increases. Named after Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) and derived from "Recherches sur la probabilité des jugements en matière criminelle et en matière civile" (1837; "Research on the Probability of Criminal and Civil Verdicts").

Segal's law – "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Shirky principle – "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

Sievers' law – In Indo-European linguistics, accounts for the pronunciation of a consonant cluster with a glide (*w or *y) before a vowel as it was affected by the phonetics of the preceding syllable. Named after Germanic philologist Eduard Sievers (1859-1932).

Sieverts' law – In physical metallurgy, a rule to predict the solubility of gases in metals. Named after German chemist Adolf Sieverts (1874–1947).

Simpson's paradox - In probability and statistics, Simpson's paradox, or the Yule–Simpson effect, is a paradox in which a trend that appears in different groups of data disappears when these groups are combined, and the reverse trend appears for the aggregate data.

Smeed's law – An empirical rule relating traffic fatalities to traffic congestion as measured by the proxy of motor vehicle registrations and country population. After R. J. Smeed.[9]

Sowa's law of standards – "Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X."

Stein's law – If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. If a trend cannot go on forever, there is no need for action or a program to make it stop, much less to make it stop immediately; it will stop of its own accord.

Stevens' power law – In psychophysics, this law relates the intensity of a stimulus to its perceived strength. It supersedes the Weber-Fechner law, since it can describe a wider range of sensations. The theory is named after its inventor, S. Smith Stevens (1906–1973).

Streisand effect - The phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

Sutton's law – "Go where the money is". Often cited in medical schools to teach new doctors to spend resources where they are most likely to pay off. The law is named after bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks, is claimed to have answered "Because that's where the money is."

Vegard's law – In metallurgy, an approximate empirical rule which holds that a linear relation exists, at constant temperature, between the crystal lattice parameter of an alloy and the concentrations of the constituent elements. Named for Lars Vegard.

Verdoorn's law – In economics, this law pertains to the relationship between the growth of output and the growth of productivity. According to the law, faster growth in output increases productivity due to increasing returns. Named after Dutch economist, Petrus Johannes Verdoorn.

Verner's law – Stated by Karl Verner in 1875, Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *s and *x, when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively *b, *d, *z and *g.

Wagner's law – Predicts that the development of an industrial economy will be accompanied by an increased share of public expenditure in gross national product, and is named after the German economist Adolph Wagner (1835–1917).

Walras' law - States that budget constraints imply that the values of excess market demands must sum to zero.

Woodward–Hoffmann rules – in organic chemistry predicting the stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions based on orbital symmetry.

Yao's principle – In computational complexity theory, states that the expected cost of any randomized algorithm for solving a given problem, on the worst case input for that algorithm, can be no better than the expected cost, for a worst-case random probability distribution on the inputs, of the deterministic algorithm that performs best against that distribution. Named for Andrew Yao.

Zawinski's law – Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.

Zipf's law – In linguistics, the observation that the frequency of use of the nth-most-frequently-used word in any natural language is approximately inversely proportional to n, or, more simply, that a few words are used very often, but many or most are used rarely. Named after George Kingsley Zipf (1902–1950), whose statistical body of research led to the observation. More generally, the term Zipf's law refers to the probability distributions involved, which are applied by statisticians not only to linguistics but also to fields remote from that.